In this Feb. 14, 2012, file photo President Barack Obama and Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, left, talk to reporters during their Oval Office meeting at the White House in Washington. When Obama and Jinping meet again at week’s end for an unusual two-day summit at a Southern California estate, Obama will be looking for signs of seriousness in China’s recent private pledges to address cyberhacking, which he has said is a rapidly growing threat to national security. This while keeping present that it is China, whose help will be needed to stem nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran, to curtail the violence in Syria, and to build on the U.S. economic recovery.

China’s President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart, Barack Obama, begin two days of meetings in California Friday with hopes of avoiding the historic conflicts between rising and established super powers that are uppermost in their minds.

Chinese officials in particular have, for weeks, been touting the concept of a “new type of great power relationship” to replace the mood of “strategic distrust” that has grown between the two in recent years.

The informal setting for the six hours of meetings planned for Xi and Obama at Sunnylands, the former estate of publisher, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in California, is certainly aimed fostering a personal rapport between the two men.

But the list of reasons for continuing mistrust is formidable.

Finding a relationship that avoids replaying the rivalry between rising power Germany and global super power Britain before the First World War or between the United States and the Soviet Union after the Second World War will not be easy.

Chinese officials look at the Obama administration’s “pivot” of its foreign policy focus from the Atlantic to Asia-Pacific, complete with a greater military presence, and are convinced they are the target.

That apprehension is reinforced by Washington’s affirmations of its alliances with Asian nations like Japan, South Korea, India and the countries of Southeast Asia.

China has disputes of one sort or another with almost all its neighbours, and to Beijing their ability to call on American backing is a purposeful interference by the U.S.

And Washington is very much aware that in Xi, who became head of the Chinese Communist Party in November and president earlier this year, it is dealing with a very different brand of leader from those grey men recently in power in Beijing.

Xi exudes self-confidence and unlike his predecessor, Hu Jintao, is not shy about presenting China as a great power that will follow its own ambitions.

Xi has talked about “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” which conjures up a vision of a return to the country’s economic supremacy and imperial domination of its neighbours until the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century and the rise of the European powers.

And, on the ground, the spectre of China’s re-emergence as a revived Middle Kingdom from which other states accept wise instruction and to which they pay tribute is not just a vision of the imagination.

China is using its massive investment in a modern military machine to prod and jostle its neighbours over territorial disputes.

Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan have all had highly dangerous confrontations with China’s new navy and air force in recent months; confrontations that could easily have led to serious conflicts and might yet do.

Obama will doubtless this weekend reaffirm Washington’s commitment to its allies and attempt to press Xi to use diplomatic and international legal channels rather than the People’s Liberation Army to resolve disputes.

Another area where China is already behaving with the imperious arrogance of the Middle Kingdom is in the realm of cybertheft.

The scale and unapologetic sense of entitlement of China’s theft of intellectual property from foreign governments and corporations, especially military technology from the U.S., is appalling.

Beijing has agreed to talk with Washington about the issue. But clearly one of the reasons for the informal structure of this weekend’s summit is to allow Obama to be blunt with Xi about this and other irritants without threatening the overall relationship.

There are, perhaps, better prospects for near-term cooperation over North Korea.

China has recently shown that it too is angered and alarmed by the Pyongyang regime’s development of a functional nuclear weapon. Beijing has stepped away from its traditional role of supporting Pyongyang whatever antics leader Kim Jong Un and his predecessors get up to. China is enforcing United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang and clearly wants a nuclear-weapons-free Korean peninsular.

But Beijing and Washington see the future of the peninsula very differently.

The U.S. envisages North and South Korea being reunited under the political and economic leadership of the South.

Beijing wants Korea to remain divided for as long as possible.

The economic relationship is one area where Beijing and Washington are not facing the same tensions as in recent years.

Xi concerns are with the possible effects on domestic stability and the legitimacy in power of the Communist party as China’s economic performance slows.

And for Obama the narrowing of the trade deficit because of the rising value of the Chinese currency means China is no longer pilloried as the cause of America’s economic ills.

This weekend’s summit is unlikely to produce concrete agreements, but if it fosters a working relationship between Xi and Obama it may have profound effects.

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